


Unspoken

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: My Family (And Other Dinosaurs) [8]
Category: Primeval
Genre: F/M, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-31
Updated: 2009-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 21:14:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3264575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Juliet and Liz, before they were Juliet and Liz: Liz was always there, but now she’s everywhere Juliet looks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unspoken

            Juliet saw Liz everywhere.

 

            She barely noticed her before the incident on Duke of Edinburgh that they didn’t talk about; she was just Liz Lester, who might have been the school thug except for the fact that she wasn’t, Liz Lester, who was so good at CCF, Liz Lester, who was so quick to defend her friends, Liz Lester, who was as fit and as tough, maybe more so, than any of the boys. She was part of the furniture, of the hard plastic chairs and mildly defaced tables, frayed textbooks and nondescript lino of the classrooms, melting into the background of rushing, shouting, bickering kids.

 

            But now, Juliet _noticed_ her. Caught sight of her absently using her foot to shunt a football back to its proper owner in the playground, couldn’t look away from her head down and tongue caught between her teeth as she wrestled with a graph in Geography, spotted her running for the bus, and never paying Juliet a blind bit of attention. Sometimes, too rarely, Liz looked up and caught her and smiled, and these days Juliet dared to sit at her table in lunch, but she wasn’t even really a friend, and Juliet wanted to be more.

 

            That was hard to understand. Juliet had dated a couple of boys, and she’d had crushes, like every other girl. She dumped the last one because he wanted her to sleep with him (and for Christ’s sake, fifteen going on sixteen still wasn’t sixteen, and she didn’t care what other girls did, and she didn’t like him that much anyway, and- you know what? Just get out! It’s _over_!) but she never thought she might fancy girls  instead. And then she asked Liz to help her with Maths, and Liz agreed, and after a solid hour spent in her company, bent over a sheet of Maths problems, Juliet suddenly found herself thinking it all the time.

 

            In her nightmares she relived the events of their Duke of Edinburgh expedition, remembered Liz tensed as if for a fight, heard Liz’s voice spilling harsh orders and recalled her thick, clumsy, deadened muscles struggling to follow them- felt the bite of the cold water, the pure relief when Liz and Ed plunged into the river close by. In her dreams, she reached out for the other girl, fingers scrabbling on smooth skin and catching hold of drenched clothes, pulling her forward as Liz flailed desperately, spluttered and choked on the water, clearing her lungs, her brown eyes blinking as water streamed down her face and focusing for a few moments on Juliet, as if she was anchoring herself in a world gone mad.

 

            Juliet let the memory carry her on, to the few words she and Liz had spoken to each other, pitifully young and soaked through and a little shocked that it was all over, that the lizard... thing was gone. It had been months since then, and until Juliet had asked for tutoring they’d barely talked, but Juliet had found Liz friendly enough, and more friendly as Liz got used to her, used to her company. When Liz had called time on that first session of tutoring they had left the books behind and moved on to coffee and tea and just talking, about family and school and then, tentatively, about what had happened on Duke of Edinburgh, and the reactions, the aftermath. The nightmares... It had helped Juliet, really helped her, to hear brave, tough Liz admitting to her own nightmares. It made her feel like she wasn’t a coward for being afraid, and she’d told Liz so; Liz had smacked her shoulder lightly, and smiled at her, and told her not to be ridiculous. Was it _wrong_ to keep the memory of that smile so bright and fresh in her mind?

 

            Of course, what she imagined in the privacy of her own head was never going to happen. Liz would never call Juliet her girlfriend, never go out with her to a movie and never sit with a loose, possessive arm across Juliet’s shoulders, and it was stupid to think like that, more so to wonder what it would be like to touch that pale skin and pull out the hairband just so she could run her fingers through that dark hair, kiss those lips. It would never happen. The last would probably only get her a bitten lip, and lose her this little hope of a friendship.

 

            So Juliet lived for smiles and teasing comments and little chokes of laughter when she said something that amused Liz, and never once noticed that sometimes – just sometimes – Liz watched her back.

 

           


End file.
